Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice fyre  It is funny how a lot of covers bear absolutley no relation to the book that they are protecting. |
This is very true, and except for the richest, best-selling authors, it is the publisher who often decides what goes on the cover. I often suspect a cover artist only reads the synopsis before painting, or pulls some piece of crap out of their closet that they haven't yet managed to sell.
If a book is art, then it should by necessity include an appropriate cover. I remember Terry Goodkind freaking out about the cover of Wizard's First Rule (and rightfully so, as the dragon on the front filled about three pages of the whole book). Then again, Goodkind freaks out about nearly everything. Steven Erikson has had some awful covers for the Malazan books, and I am sure that the artists did not read them (if they had, the figures on the front would never have looked so darn sexily heroic, like a romance novel).
One of the reasons I love Janny Wurts books is that she does her own covers (except for her first novel, Sorcerer's Legacy, and alas, it shows). This is a link to the cover of her latest,
Stormed Fortress,
Wars of Light and Shadow 8: Alliance of Light 5: Stormed Fortress
which I think is a great cover, because (a) it is well painted, and (b) it relates directly to the subject matter inside the book. She has done different covers for UK and US editions through the whole series (UK gets landscapes, US gets characters). This newest cover is part of a repackaging of the entire series of books, and the look is really crisp.
Though book covers matter less nowadays for selling books (in my view), they are important to the entire artistic process involved in creating a book. In many ways, the cover is as important as the title. The old adage still applies, however, about not judging a book by its cover. A lot of good books have had really, really bad covers.